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Have you hit a career plateau and feel like you are no longer challenged or growing in your job? Has your industry or company been hard hit, prompting you to consider if and how long you should stay? Are you bored at work and considering a career change? Leaving your job is a major disruption and therefore should be your last resort. Before you quit your job, here are five options for breaking out of a career plateau:

Reconfigure the makeup of your job

Is it with all of your job that you are dissatisfied, or some things (maybe even just one thing) in particular? You might be able to change your job right where you are by delegating things you don’t like – what’s a chore to you might be someone else’s favorite task or even a stretch role for a more junior person. If your work is project-based, you can try to shift onto projects that interest you – look at the pipeline and proactively ask for your next assignment. Or if your company is large enough that there are opportunities in other departments, you may be able to move laterally or at least work more closely with other areas that interest you.

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Find opportunities to share your expertise

If you think you know your role or your industry so well that it now bores you, consider teaching your expertise to others – look into adjunct roles at local colleges or start as a guest lecturer in someone else’s class. When you teach something, you look at the subject differently and develop a different perspective on it. Volunteer with HR to attend recruiting events or speak about your company or role – this gives you another fresh angle to view your work. Or consider mentoring someone in your field – helping others is a rewarding way to also help yourself.

Apply same skills in different venue

If your work doesn’t change much and there are no opportunities to formally collaborate with other departments, get active with a professional association or affinity group at your company. I once worked in recruiting for a large corporate but specialized in their early career hiring – to complement this without gunning for a whole new job altogether, I worked with the Asian employee affinity group on their mentorship program, pairing experienced professionals around the company with mid-level employees and thereby giving me interaction with people outside my day-to-day job.

Grow professionally outside your job

If you really feel like you have maximized all you can out of your existing job, then look at personal and professional growth on the side before you outright leave. There are many ways to build your own leadership development program – getting a mentor or being a mentor (revisit point 2!), tapping your alma mater career services, starting a book club for professional development reading. Your day-to-day work isn’t the only way to find challenge and growth. In fact, if you are good at your job and can coast for a bit, you will have more mental bandwidth and time to focus on growth.

A career plateau could be the signal that you need to leave your job, or you may just need to refine your day-to-day activities or focus outside of work. Before you make as disruptive a move as quitting your job, consider one or all of the above options first. At the very least, you will have a much stronger financial footing, professional skill set, body of work and network for you to make your next move.

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